


so paint it black and take it back

by calerine



Series: Nowhere Boys character studies [4]
Category: Nowhere Boys (TV)
Genre: Gender Dysphoria, Genderfluid Character, M/M, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-03
Updated: 2014-02-03
Packaged: 2018-01-11 01:46:25
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1167151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/calerine/pseuds/calerine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An Andy Lau character study, in which Andy is genderfluid.</p>
            </blockquote>





	so paint it black and take it back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [foreignconstellations](https://archiveofourown.org/users/foreignconstellations/gifts).



> Originally posted [here](http://badgels.tumblr.com/post/69365903958/so-paint-it-black-and-take-it-back-nowhere-boys). Warning for gender dysphoria.
> 
> For Charlie, my love.

It’s always been there, like an itch under his skin so many days of the week that it settles at the back of Andy’s mind like an unwelcome relative, niggling at his thoughts. Some early mornings, he can barely meet his own eyes in the mirror, when everything feels out of place and his body doesn’t fit right no matter which pair of socks he wears or how he pushes his hair out of his eyes.

There’s nothing to rationalise, and even that is a blessing and a curse. He doesn’t like to think about it, but it’s there. On his skin, in the way he walks, the angle of his arm when he mixes solutions during chemistry class, the way he laughs at his dad’s jokes and he wishes he could think it through, record steps like a mathematics problem and take apart, deconstruct, solve. Between algebra and velocity, his nainai calls him my grandson the future doctor with a proud glint in her eyes and Andy is torn. The word makes a nest on his collarbone and his throat is filling fast with all the things that’s ever felt wrong. So he settles for not yet but thanks, nainai and wishes the dread away.

At 11, he finds the internet and the knowledge finds him. He spends late nights scouring webpage after webpage, making excuses about non-existent tests. In the day, he hides all these labels, murmurs them under his breath when Viv shouts dage* from across the house. Sunlight makes everything more inappropriate, guilt weighing down his bones, until he can barely walk from bus stop to house. It feels like sin, murky, dark, viscous and all the overheard phone conversations - his parents bragging about him, saying Andy will do us proud, he’s going to become a doctor - feel like a betrayal.

(He counts all the genderneutral pronouns on the tips of his fingers - zie, zir, hir, xe, xyr - and can’t belong.)

At 16, he falls into a wormhole. (Or is it lucid dreaming? He hasn’t decided yet.) He falls in love with three other people all at the same time, and he doesn’t say a single thing. Not even when their secrets are spilled out on the dirty wood floor, the call of wild animals haunt their dreams and Felix’s binder already feels like a second skin under his charting palms. Sometimes he catches Jake looking at him with soft wondering eyes and Andy has to push at his lips until they lift and he turns away. Sam kisses him like he knows. It scares him.

Andy tells them after two months, after Jake steals a skirt and does his make-up in the lamplight. The words feel foreign in his mouth, they are haphazard and tricky and all not in the right order that he wants to take them all back immediately but he lifts his eyes and find the three of them listening so carefully. Felix comes to take his hands. This doesn’t change anything, he says. You’re still a nerd, but ours, Jake tickles Andy’s ankles with his toes until he squirms away and Sam reaches out to hug him.

(That night, they ask if his name still feels right, if he/his/him still sit comfortably along the dips of his spine. Andy looks at them until Felix touches gentle the knob of his wrist and says we can keep trying until we find something. Nothing is quite right but for once, nothing is quite so wrong either.)

**Author's Note:**

> *dàgē - 大哥 means ‘older brother’ in Mandarin  
> năināi - 奶奶 means ‘grandmother’ but you knew that already


End file.
